John Florio
John Florio (* 1553 in London, † 1625 in Fulham, London ), Italian Giovanni Florio, was an English translator ( Montaigne ) and scholar of the Elizabethan period. He was a language teacher at the court of James I, and possibly a close friend of William Shakespeare.
His father, Michelangelo Florio was born in Tuscany Italian, who after the change to the Protestant ( Calvinist ) faith only in Naples, then in England during the reign of Edward VI. Sought refuge. He was pastor in 1550 of the Italian Protestant congregation in London and employed by William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley. Both items he lost after an accusation of immorality, but later not grudge him Lord Burghley. He wrote a book about the Italian language, which he dedicated to Henry Herbert. Maybe he was a teacher in the family of William Herbert, 1st Earl of Pembroke, the father of the 2nd Earl of Pembroke ( who in turn was married to Mary Sidney, sister of the poet and courtier Sir Philip Sidney ). He was also Italian teacher of Lady Jane Grey ( after his retirement to Switzerland touched their execution Michelangelo Florio later so strong that he '' wrote a book about the " Protestant martyr ) and the Princess Elizabeth, later Queen Elizabeth. The mother of John Florio was almost certainly an Englishwoman, and Florio himself felt always an Englishman.
The Florio family left ( as Anthony Wood) England after the accession to the throne of Queen Mary. In Strasbourg, Michelangelo Florio members of the aristocratic Protestant family de Salis Bregaglia met in the Italian- speaking part of Switzerland, the ( north of Lake Como ) offered him the post of pastor and teacher in Soglio. There, John Florio grew up, learned from his father to speak fluent Italian (and probably from his mother fluent in English ) and an additional French and German. At age 7, he attended school and later a university in Germany. At the time of Queen Elizabeth ( the early 1570s ), he returned to England, possibly together with his mother.
The John comprehensive humanistic formed Florio, who felt the English language clumsy and barbaric, saw it as his mission to enrich the English by enriching their language about Italian proverbs and placement of aristocratic manners of the continent and began working as an Italian teacher. He also worked for the Elizabethan spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham as an agent, since it eg worked in the house of the French ambassador as a teacher. As a friend of Giordano Bruno, he gave the English intellectuals such as Sir Philip Sidney whose teachings about the life on alien planets. Some time Florio was at Oxford University, where he at Magdalen College Tutor of the son of the Bishop of Durham ( Richard Barnes ) was in 1576 and in 1581 a member of the College as a tutor for French and Italian was. In 1578 he published a guide to learning the Italian ( and its culture ), titled after about how his speech with proverbs and witty twists accumulates ( " First Fruits .. " ), the 1591 is a sequel, "Second Fruits, to be Gathered of twelve trees .. " followed, announced with 6000 Italian phrases in the Appendix. This dialogues and extracts from Italian writers were partly printed in parallel Italian and English.
Florio was a teacher very fashionable and had different patrons. He lived in his own words a few years at Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, and William Herbert, and was friends with the Earl of Pembroke, which he gave in his will ( with the clear intention that he cared about his second wife Rose ).
1598, he published his Italian - English Dictionary "A world of words". After the accession of James I in 1603 he became a teacher for Italian and French for his heir Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales. It was " gentleman of the privy chamber" and " Clerk of Closet" of Queen Anne, he taught also. He called a considerably enlarged edition of his dictionary, accordingly, after the Queen "Queen Anna's New World of Words".
His main work is the translation of the essays of Montaigne ( " Essayes on Morall, Politician, and Millitarie Discourses of Lo. Michaell de Montaigne " ), published in three books in 1603. The second edition in 1611 was also dedicated to the Queen. A copy of the first edition of the essays in the British Library contains an ownership signature of Shakespeare, which was maintained for real long time, but is now regarded as a forgery of the 18th century. Another copy bears the name of Ben Jonson. Occasionally ( Bishop William Warburton ) was suspected that Florio is the archetype of Holofernes in " Love's Labour's Lost " by Shakespeare, a pedantic, bombastic speeches stopping school master. Given the close relationship of Florio to Shakespeare's patron Southampton, it is more likely that Shakespeare himself with Florio was a friend and had his knowledge of Italian and French Literature from him .. Florio was also a friend of Ben Jonson, who gave him a copy of his " Volpone " with the dedication " to his loving father and worthy friend Master John Florio " sent.
Florio married a sister of the poet Samuel Daniel, in the house of Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, worked, which kept up a literary circle ( " Wilton Circle "). Wood characterizes Florio in his " Athenae Oxonienses " as versed in his profession, eager deeply connected to his religion and his chosen with his native England.
He died in the fall of 1625 in Fulham in London in poverty, since the payment of the royal pension materialize. His house in Shoe Lane was sold to settle his heavy debts, but his daughter made a good match in marriage. Many of the descendants were royal physicians.